As you can see in the image above the brains behind the TRS Drawbot is quite capable at rendering the likeness of Makey, the Make: and Maker Faire mascot robot. And like any good drawbot it is able to replicate the same drawing over and over and over again.
Once properly calibrated, you merely need to switch on the battery pack and connect your audio player. Position your pen or marker at the beginning of every drawing to ensure there’s adequate pressure on the paper, and the drawbot takes care of the rest!
And yes you read that right: this drawbot is controlled not by a microcontroller but rather by most digital audio players. It achieves this with the aid of a couple pieces of software, namely StippleGen (popularly known from the EggBot project) and Mikal Hart‘s forked DrawBot code that essentially converts SVGs to PWM waveforms and saves the result as a WAV file for playback.
If it sounds difficult, it’s not. Yes there are a few dozen parts and tools needed to complete this build, but following our step-by-step instructions the TRS Drawbot can easily be completed in a weekend. Additionally, this project contains some interesting build tricks (dare I say hacks!), specifically, using the rails of the drawbot as power and ground. Watch how we built it in the video below, and if you further mod this design, or produce an interesting drawing you want to share with others, send us pictures of your build along with your story to the Weekend Projects team.
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